Motivational Quotes

Nations

There was never a nation that became great until it came to the knowledge that it had nowhere in the world to go for help.

- Warner, Charles Dudley

Best Quotes about Nations

The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.

Ruskin, John

It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales!

Bolt, Robert

If there be no nobility of descent in a nation, all the more indispensable is it that there should be nobility of ascent -- a character in them that bear rule, so fine and high and pure, that as men come within the circle of its influence, they involuntarily pay homage to that which is the one pre-eminent distinction, the Royalty of Virtue.

Potter, Henry Codman

As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take this examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one would be a penny the stupider.

Forster, Edward M.

We prefer world law, in the age of self-determination, to world war in the age of mass extermination.

Kennedy, John F.

I do not call the sod under my feet my country; but language -- religion -- government -- blood -- identity in these makes men of one country.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

The UN is not just a product of do-gooders. It is harshly real. The day will come when men will see the U.N. and what it means clearly. Everything will be all right -- you know when? When people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction, and see it as a drawing they made themselves.

Hammarskjold, Dag

Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.

Thoreau, Henry David

The simplest explanation is that it doesn't make sense.

Buechner, Professor William

10.

The best thing I know between France and England is the sea.

Jerrold, Douglas William

11.

There's always something fishy about the French.

Coward, Noel

12.

The policy of Russia is changeless. Its methods, its tactics, its maneuvers may change, but the polar star of its policy, world domination, is a fixed star. [About Russia]

Marx, Karl

13.

There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.

Disraeli, Benjamin

14.

The less you know about a subject, the longer it takes you to explain it.

15.

England can never be ruined except by a Parliament.

Burleigh, Lord

16.

Switzerland is simply a large, lumpy, solid rock with a thin skin of grass stretched over it.

Twain, Mark

17.

Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.

Burke, Edmund

18.

France is a place where the money falls apart in your hands but you cannot tear the toilet paper.

Wilder, Billy

19.

States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.

Plato

20.

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanations.

Saki

21.

A nation is not conquered which is perpetually to be conquered.

Burke, Edmund

22.

A Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe.

Burton, Pierre

23.

This organization is created to prevent you from going to hell. It isn't created to take you to heaven.

Lodge Jr., Henry Cabot

24.

Men may be linked in friendship. Nations are linked only by interests.

Hochhuth, Rolf

25.

The greatest nations have all acted like gangsters and the smallest like prostitutes.

Kubrick, Stanley

26.

France is the country where the money falls apart and you can't tear the toilet paper.

Wilder, Billy

27.

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

28.

Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.

Hobsbawm, E. J.

29.

If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

30.

Nations do not think, they only feel. They get their feelings at second hand through their temperaments, not their brains. A nation can be brought -- by force of circumstances, not argument -- to reconcile itself to any kind of government or religion that can be devised; in time it will fit itself to the required conditions; later it will prefer them and will fiercely fight for them.

Twain, Mark

31.

Frenchmen have an unlimited capacity for gallantry and indulge it on every occasion.

Moliere

32.

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts -- the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.

Ruskin, John

33.

The United Nations is our one great hope for a peaceful and free world.

Bunche, Ralph

34.

We have actively sought and are actively seeking to make the United Nations an effective instrument of international cooperation.

Acheson, Dean

35.

China has no income tax, no unemployment and not a single soldier outside its borders.

Chou En Lai

36.

Do not on any account attempt to write on both sides of the paper at once.

Sellar, W. C.

37.

The whole basis of the United Nations is the right of all nations--great or small--to have weight, to have a vote, to be attended to, to be a part of the twentieth century.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

38.

States that rise quickly, just as all the other things of nature that are born and grow rapidly, cannot have roots and ramifications; the first bad weather kills them.

Machiavelli, Niccolo

39.

I am like a doctor. I have written a prescription to help the patient. If the patient doesn't want all the pills I've recommended, that's up to him. But I must warn that next time I will have to come as a surgeon with a knife.

Cuellar, Javier Perez De

40.

How can you govern a country with two hundred and forty six varieties of cheese?

Gaulle, Charles De

41.

The more I saw of foreign countries the more I loved my own.

De Delloy

42.

The trees in Siberia are miles apart, that is why the dogs are so fast. [About Russia]

Hope, Bob

43.

The only thing chicken about Israel is their soup.

Hope, Bob

44.

A Country is not a mere territory; the particular territory is only its foundation. The Country is the idea which rises upon that foundation; it is the sentiment of love, the sense of fellowship which binds together all the sons of that territory.

Mazzini, Giuseppe

45.

The maxim of the British people is Business as usual.

Churchill, Winston

46.

I like the English. They have the most rigid code of immorality in the world.

Bradbury, Malcolm

47.

I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.

Weil, Simone

48.

Without a country, I am not a man.